THE BOOK OF DEBORAH THE DISEASE OF HEALTH

It is the Spring of 2021, and we are in the final stretch of hibernation because of the viral threat. We’re all doing something to break out, inoculating, double masking, denying.

I know it sounds harsh, but the planet does have to clean house sometimes. And let’s not call nature’s kettle burnt when all our pots are full of rust, meaning we aren’t the best relatives.

I saw a cartoon recently that was not very laughable about a beach that was inundated with human-generated trash, with more washing ashore with each wave. The caption read: “Here, you forgot to take this with you.” It would be funny if it weren’t so unbearably true and on a cataclysmic level. Hey neighbor. The jokes on us.

Every couple of decades, we are plagued, hint hint, with a new and scary illness that forces us to stop for a moment and reconsider how we are living. Some claim these events are not our fault. We speculate, calling them religious predictions, or scientific anomalies, government hoaxes, or natural happenings. The usual results are the herd is thinned a little of the old and weak. The majority remain to put more thought and study on how to continue to exploit everything of value we find.

When I was young and full of shit and bad habits, I thought that we were meant to mutate. At the time, a real convenience would have been having a lighter built into my fingertips, so I never had to look for matches when I wanted to smoke. And what a relief it would have been to have an ashtray built right into my wrist, so when I was doing something, I didn’t have to stop to put my cigarette out.

Now I make silent jokes to myself when a smoker passes by. I would love to tell them how great their “Bottom of the ashtray” Marlboro cologne and mouthwash smell. I keep my trap shut, though, now that I’ve learned I did indeed have a built-in ashtray—my lungs.

In spite of ourselves, we continue to live. It’s quite amazing. We take up time and space, use resources that don’t belong to just us. How is it we don’t learn with all our knowledge?

What a treat to have the disease of health.